Wednesday, December 9, 2009

How many finishes

I am putting this dummy together, and I have the cover and one finished piece done for the inside. I still have some sketches to finish. I am wondering if I should do another finish or if 2 seems okay. I have done finishes more in the past with other dummies. What are your thoughts?
Patti

5 comments:

Unknown said...

from everything I've read - you only need a couple of finished pieces...they really want to see that the story is good - and that's the most important thing...and they can figure the rest out with the sketches...and it keeps you from having to spend too much time on it until it gets picked up for publication...

Christy/Tiddly Inks Digitals said...

Yeah, I agree with Isaac. A couple of finished pieces... but I have also heard not to include many colored pieces at all. They might not like the finished pieces where they might like the sketches if they had just seen them.

Unknown said...

I think the key is to show the best possible product. That means make the book look as close to final book as you can so the art director or editor can show it to the sales team and say "here is what the book will look like, can you sell this?"

I think you really only need two color pages. The rest of the book needs to be dead on target as to what you want your story to convey. If your story gets weak in the middle, don't think the editor is going to take time to make suggestions or help make a better book. They want a polished piece of work. They want a strong idea and a story that flows from start to finish. I see some book roughs and I can't make heads or tails what the story is about and the illustration are so rough that I can't imagine an editor looking through more than the first two pages before throwing it away.

I'm going on here, so this is it in a nut shell. Your story idea is in a pile of story ideas. A huge pile of story ideas. A pile that editors don't really want to go through at the end of the month. Your story idea has to be good enough to rise to the top of the pile into the editors hands and pitched at that sales meeting.

Patti said...

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it. Just finished last sketch for the dummy. Not it's time to go back over everything and check it.

Unknown said...

Good luck. I have a story that I need to submit soon. Just been busy with so many things I can't finish my one art sample.